


crossed out

by firstaudrina



Series: sad marriage series [3]
Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Physical Abuse, Post-Canon, part of this fic deals with blair's marriage to chuck so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 08:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11779146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.





	crossed out

**Author's Note:**

> So here it is: the last in a series I started a very long time ago. Those other two stories are necessary for this one, in my opinion, but you could probably skate by with canon if you liked. 
> 
> This will probably be my last Gossip Girl fic. Never say never and who knows what the future holds and all that, but at this moment in time I have no plans to write another fic in this fandom. It's been real, kids.

Dying for love is only romantic in the movies.

When Blair was young she thought it would be terribly wonderful, in the abstract, to perish from love, to be on fire, to burn away. L'amour fou. The reality is a lot more pragmatic, and it hurts.

Dying for love is only romantic in the movies. Blair is tired of bleeding. 

 

 

 

It's funny in an ironic sense, but lately when Blair looks in the mirror, something in her face reminds her of Anne Archibald. As kids they always made fun of her pinched expression by making fish-faces at each other, at Nate to cheer him up whenever his mother was especially cruel. But lately Blair looks in the mirror and sees that same pinched hollowness in herself. She thinks about being married to an avaricious man she half-hates and having a son she doesn't understand. She thinks about Chuck always making and losing his fortune and Blair signing away her family money to him, Blair saying _I'll just write you a check_. Chuck's face going from reluctantly grateful in the early years to resentful, hateful, emasculated. Blair feeling good when he looked like that. Blair feeling powerful. 

Blair's marriage is not that different from the marriages of the other women she knows, though she has a few advantages. Her money is her own and it always will be. She's even something of a novelty to them, a former almost-princess with a real job that she got from her mommy.

All of the women who have remained ensconced in their good families and good standing are the same. They all married young, though Blair started the youngest. They all have small children that they use like pieces on a chessboard. They all cycle through nannies endlessly but couldn't change a diaper with a gun to their heads. Their husbands are all cheating on them and most of them don't mind. They sit on the boards of charities. They aggressively monitor each other's eating and boozing. Blair spent so much of her early adult life longing for high school, and she found it. 

But sometimes she sits in her tastefully appointed home drinking white wine in her cashmere loungewear and she feels like the punchline to a joke whose set up she somehow missed. She got everything she ever wanted. So why does she feel like a ghost?

 

 

 

There is, of course, a downside to things. 

Blair has trouble keeping meals down. She attends therapy regularly and always takes her anti-depressants but nothing seems to fix her. She's gotten more fragile as the years went by, she faints regularly and she's plagued by migraines. She's gotten paranoid, too, but it's not without reason. She knows Chuck has a roster of private investigators that he uses regularly and at least some of them are employed solely to keep an eye on her, because Chuck is always convinced that she's having an affair even though she never is and he keeps a girl in a renovated apartment in Tribeca. 

Chuck buys her things. Cars that Blair doesn't drive because she never learned. Enough jewelry to make Liz Taylor blush. Antiques, art, vintage fashion. He's so sorry he screamed at her in front of his new business partner and his wife. He's so sorry he got so drunk he passed out in the foyer and Henry found him there the next morning. He's so sorry about the girl in Tribeca, he didn't even know how it happened, honestly. He's so sorry when Blair cries. He loves her. Doesn't she like the new bracelet?

Chuck offers little comments here and there, too. Has she gained weight? Has she lost weight? Was she paying enough attention to Henry? Does she really need that job, wouldn't she be happier at home or on his arm, charming the people whose money he wanted? Doesn't she think they should have another baby?

It was a miracle they'd had the first one. There were two miscarriages before Henry and he came three months before he was supposed to, leaving Blair bloodless and wan. The doctors said he had an eighty-five percent chance of survival but he was so small that Blair could barely stand to be in the hospital with him, this delicate thing in a bubble. He terrified her. She found herself repulsed by him, repulsed by herself. Chuck sent her away to _recover_ elsewhere and she spent the first few months of her son's life gone, over-medicated and pampered at a treatment center, hating herself. Maybe that's why they never bonded. 

He's still so small, barely five. Blair looks at him like a miniature stranger in her home, wondering: who are you? How did you get here? Who do you belong to?

The answer, of course, is Chuck. Everything in the house belongs to Chuck. When Henry was born, Chuck took over like a hero. He only left the baby's bedside when the staff banished him, doctors and nurses gazing at him with soft, respectful looks. 

Nothing in that house is Blair's.

 

 

 

The second baby changes everything.

When Blair first realizes she's pregnant, she wants to rip it out of her body with her bare hands, she wants one of those violent and old-fashioned desperate acts, she wants blood. In that split second of time she realizes why women throw themselves down the stairs.

But as she calms down, counting to ten like that one obnoxious marriage counselor always said to do, a cold realization begins to wind its way through her body, cooling her blood thirst. Blair has been incredibly unsuccessful at carrying a child to term. Every one of them had escaped from her as fast as it could, cramping and sudden, and every time Blair was glad – for them, for herself. Even Henry barely survived her. 

This one begins to feel as though it's already on its way out: just passing through, just passing by, like Blair's body is a rest stop on the way to some unknown destination. Blair does not expect anything to come from this cluster of cells because nothing ever has before. She has an inhospitable womb, so it's just a matter of waiting. But until then –

Until then, it's leverage. 

 

 

 

Blair never imagines that she's going to have another child after Henry. That's what the doctors told her. That's what past experience told her. The chances were just too slim.

She keeps waiting, through the fights, through the divorce, for the baby to disappear in a swirl of red. _Wait until we sign the papers_ , she tells it. Wait until Blair is legally free. If it's before, Chuck may deign to forgive her and then punish her for the rest of forever. As long as it's after he'll think she got what was coming to her and Blair is fine with him thinking that as long as she's not his wife anymore. 

She knows she needs a partner in crime for her plan to work, for Chuck to really believe her. Once upon a time many years ago, Dan would have been the only person she'd even think to ask something like this because she knew he would do it. He would understand without her needing to explain. But she thinks of Serena and Dan's tight-lipped smiles, their tight-lipped marriage, and the only other man she has it in her to trust anymore is Nate. 

She isn't sure he'll be on her side when she brings the idea to him, but he must recognize Anne Archibald in her face too because he agrees with the solemn sweet easiness of the boy she loved when she was ten years old. There's a kind of poetry to it being Nate, something that tugs on Chuck's deepest insecurities. He never thought Dan was a threat, not really. Nate is everything Chuck never was: effortlessly charming, liked by everyone, with wealth passed down over centuries. Chuck thinks he's been fighting the shadow of Nate his entire life and now Nate has been – allegedly – fucking his wife for months. Nate has managed to get Blair pregnant. The irony makes it perfect. 

There is a paternity test, of course, but all Blair has to do is make sure the labels get switched on the samples. That's it. It's that easy. Nate for Chuck and Chuck for Nate and Nate is the apparent father of her temporary child. Chuck will never have to know. 

But the process takes a long time and against all odds the baby hangs in there. Blair's body changes in ways she has never truly experienced. She gives birth to a girl she names Nicolette Cornelia Waldorf and she refuses to put any man's name down on the birth certificate. It is a strange feeling, there in the hospital, alone with her daughter. No one was there for the birth except the staff, no one Blair loved or cared about at all. She doesn't even tell anyone she went into labor until Nicolette is a day old. It's like she conceived and bore this child all by herself, stamped with no one's shadow but her own. Nicolette is her mirror image. She's Blair's alone. And Blair loves her. 

 

 

 

Blair hums "La Vie En Rose" when Nicolette can't sleep. It's something she does throughout Nic's entire life, from her colicky infancy (due to a gluten allergy, making her a very _en vogue_ baby) through toddler sniffles and sleepless little girl nights. On Sundays they watch _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ together, cuddling in Blair's bed, though it takes a few years before Nicolette can truly appreciate it. Blair's own mother never would have done that, never, except even as she thinks it Blair remembers a time very long ago, being so small and smushed amongst her mother's duvet while Eleanor drew and teased her. That time in Blair's life ended so quickly.

Blair does not want to lie to Nicolette about anything. This is difficult for two reasons: one, Blair lies like other people brush their teeth; two, Nicolette's entire conception was a very carefully constructed lie. It's that more than anything that keeps Blair honest, when she can be. 

Blair went on maternity leave when Nicolette was born, but when it came time to return to Waldorf Designs she found she couldn't bear the idea of stepping into the elegantly miserable rooms again. So she left it behind. It was becoming easier and easier to do things like that. She lived off her vast wealth for a year or two, but in her free moments she started to put together a silly website about style, full of recommendations and biting criticisms. It began to catch on. Things snowballed. Blair became suddenly relevant again. She got a book deal. She made appearances alongside waxy-looking YouTubers. She launched a makeup line, overpriced and refined. She branded it all with her own name, _WALDORF_ , and after a while she even had glossy offices of her own with archives of all the beautiful nonsense she had spent her life accruing. 

She has the nanny bring Nicolette there after school most days, letting her daughter run amok amongst the couture and do her homework at Blair's huge glass desk. When Serena's daughter Annabelle is in New York she treats Blair's office like most children would treat an amusement park, excited and exuberant. But most days it's just Blair and Nic.

Once when Blair is taking a break, she and Nic move hand-in-hand through the archives, Blair pointing out every important dress from every important occasion in her life. At the very, very back are Blair's wedding gowns in clear garment bags: one voluminous and ivory, the other glittering ice blue. Blair unzips them so Nic can touch the fabric with her little hand, wowed. She looks up at Blair, all big brown eyes.

"What are these?"

And because Blair has lied so much in her life, she decides not to now. "They're from my weddings," she says. "I was married twice. Once to y– to Henry's father." She touches the blue. "And once to – do you remember when Mommy told you about Grace Kelly?"

Nicolette never asks about her father, thankfully, but something must be on her mind because that night she wants "La Vie En Rose." Blair obliges like she always does, letting Nicolette curl up in her big bed with her, stroking her daughter's curly hair until she's drowsy. 

"You know," Blair says, absently, once Nic is half-asleep. She's thinking of that song and _Sabrina_ and her stupid first wedding, even stupider than her second. "That song always makes me think of your Uncle Dan."

 

 

 

Blair doesn't think about Dan often.

It doesn't matter how often Blair thinks about Dan.

 

 

 

Blair attends most of Nate's charity events; she can even be counted on to be the woman on his arm when he needs, albeit platonically. It doesn't feel like it did with Chuck. With Nate it's like playing pretend, stepping into the roles their parents thought up for them when they were children. It's fun.

Serena rarely comes into the city anymore, but she can be tempted from her picturesque Connecticut cottage for a friendly favor now and then. She brings Dan along, both of them looking utterly out of sorts for the city these days: Serena makeup-free with grown-in roots, Dan unshaven in a rumpled suit. These strange suburban people who stopped caring about what things look like. 

Blair and Dan rarely speak these days, if ever. They are as distant as they were in high school, two tenuous acquaintances connected by one very golden thread. But that night they end up side by side at the bar, awkwardly jammed between a tipsy debutante and a gaggle of businessmen. 

"Some shindig, huh?" Dan says, eyebrow arching and lips doing that little smirk he always did.

"I see your time in the wilderness has led to the deterioration of your vocabulary," Blair replies archly.

He laughs a little. "Surprisingly, my publisher might agree with you."

Blair frowns. She hadn't wanted him to give in, she wanted – she wanted the fight. He notices; he always did.

"Don't be sour, Waldorf," he says. "I'm old now, very boring. The social event of my year is the grade school Spring Sing. Did you know Scott got a very highly sought after part as a rutabaga?" 

Blair can't help it: the laughter bubbles up in her and escapes her lips. Her head even tilts back a little with it. "You're absolutely full of it."

"I absolutely am not," Dan protests. "It's a very progressive school. They even give the kids a vegan option for lunch." 

Blair shakes her head a little, still smiling, but then Dan touches her arm, two inches above her elbow and two seconds of contact, and she shivers instead. 

"I'll see you around, Waldorf." Dan collects his drink and Serena's from the bartender before stepping away. 

Blair watches him go. "Bye, Dan."

 

 

 

The less said about the fight in Spain, the better. 

The less said about that entire trip, the better.

 

 

 

But if Blair _were_ to say something about that entire miserable outing, which was her unfortunate idea, it would be this:

How on _earth_ Serena got the idea that Dan was in any way biologically responsible for Nicolette is absolutely laughable. Blair could probably count the words she and Dan have said to each other in the last twelve years and not exceed fifty. She supposes she could have gotten impregnated without saying much about it, but it seems highly unlikely. Any time she and Dan have been in the same room together over the last decade they repelled like magnets. Every van der Bass family photo shows them at opposite ends of the room. 

Dan has always belonged to Serena and Blair has always known that.

 

 

 

Serena and Dan get divorced a year after the trip to Spain. That's really when things split apart entirely.

Blair and Serena have not been the same for years; it's possible they were never the same again after Serena left the first time, when they were still essentially children. Blair never quite forgave her for it, not entirely. But the conversation in Spain made it clear they knew even less about each other's lives than a cursory Google search could turn up. So after that Blair tells her everything.

She tells Serena about the surveillance and the P.I.s, the gifts and the apologies, the shattered crystal and broken glass, the bruises on her wrists and thighs. She tells Serena about therapy and prescriptions, things that took her years to balance in a way that has actually helped. She tells Serena about throwing up at galas and barely seeing her son. When she does have him things are strained. He does not love her.

"I didn't know," Serena keeps saying, voice small and getting smaller. "I didn't know."

It would be charitable to say that no one did. Blair didn't tell anyone, and no one asked. It would be forgiving but it wouldn't quite be true.

"Everyone knew," she says instead, coolly. "We've all known Chuck our entire lives. What exactly is a surprise to you here?"

Serena stares at her, eyes wet. "What happened to us?"

Blair looks at her, but her own eyes are dry. She was wrung out a long time ago. "We changed."

Serena drops her gaze to her hands, now absent a wedding ring. Her fingers look bare. "I think I was his second choice," she says, in a voice that barely wavers. "I spent all these years wanting him to love me more and he just couldn't. I was never enough."

Blair didn't know Serena could feel like that.

It's an immensely stupid realization, but there it is.

"I'm not responsible for how Dan felt," she says finally, though something sparks all over her skin at the thought. 

"I know," Serena sighs. "I suppose he got what he wanted, ultimately."

Blair frowns. "And what's that?"

Serena looks up with a small, rueful smile. "To pine." 

 

 

 

Dan divorced is one of those men women call a _catch_ , and he gets swarmed at events. He isn't even forty but there's a little gray twining through the hair at his temples, in his beard when he doesn't shave. He's a literary darling with a near-spotless record whose days on the gossip pages feel so long ago; if anything, they add a dash of excitement to his offensively decent image. Blair is certainly offended by it.

Both he and Serena are back in New York now, though in a twist of irony Serena has moved to Carroll Gardens and Dan has settled on the Lower East Side. Annabelle and Henry will be starting at Constance and St. Jude's respectively within the year, making the daily pilgrimage from Brooklyn just like their father before them. It's staggering how little things change.

They end up at a party together one night, Dan and Blair. She isn't quite sure how it happens. It's her one night off from mom duty this week and she's choosing to spend it at some spoiled brat's soiree just to get the girl to appear on the site. She runs into Dan in the bathroom after escaping for a breather, needing a moment away from everyone snapping photos for their aggressively curated social media accounts. She finds him standing in the bathtub, awkwardly craned out of the tiny window. A cigarette is hanging out of his mouth. She blinks.

"This isn't what it looks like," Dan mumbles, ash getting everywhere. 

Blair arches an eyebrow. "The world's least effective suicide?"

He smiles. He looks lighter, somehow. 

"I didn't know you smoked," she says.

"Only so I can excuse myself from talking to people," Dan tells her. "I'm hiding out." 

"From?"

"Horrible date," he says.

Blair frowns. "Isn't that a little soon?"

"No," he says mildly. "I think it's fine."

There's scrabbling at the door and, unexpectedly, Dan reaches for her waist to pull her into the bathtub too. He yanks the curtain closed and puts a finger to his lips. Blair is too old for this level of shenanigans. 

Someone comes into the bathroom, heels tapping, and makes an _mmm_ sound. There's some jewelry jangling, the opening and closing of a purse. Then the footsteps retreat and the door shuts again. Dan breathes a sigh of relief. "She saw me go in here," he says. 

"You're a child," Blair says, but her lips curve. 

"Every once in a while it pays to be ridiculous."

"If you say so." 

He grins at her with his hand still on her waist. An alarm sounds distantly in Blair's head but she doesn't care. She doesn't care.

 

 

 

They meet for lunch a week later. 

It has to be lunch because Dan has the kids every weekend and Blair has Nicolette all the time. She's not interested in explaining why she's seeing Uncle Dan without Aunt Serena in tow, or lying to her daughter about where she's going. Nic would end up telling Annabelle, who would end up telling Serena, who would make that huffy resigned face like she was just counting down the days until Blair and Dan did exactly what they're doing now.

Which is getting lunch. And then getting lunch again the next week. And soon enough every other day Blair is stepping into the same restaurant to find Dan sitting at the same table, reading or scribbling in his notebook, until he looks up to see her. He always smiles, and Blair's heart kicks into a rhythm like the opening notes of a Ronettes song.

_Stop it_ , she instructs herself firmly. _You are not allowed to have feelings for your best friend's ex-husband_. Though Serena was more her best friend in title than practice now, and she'd already assumed they'd had an affair. Blair spent more than a decade acting like Dan didn't matter to her. Does she really have to keep doing it?

 

 

 

Dan is the first to broach the topic of the past, which is to be expected even if Blair would rather close her eyes and ears to it. "We broke up because we didn't want to ruin everything for everyone else."

Was that why? Blair thinks that makes them sound nobler than they are. It's the kind of thing she would have clung to, once, to absolve herself of responsibility for any of her own mistakes. The fight in Barcelona, over a year ago now, had been about something like that. Dan had still wanted answers. Blair might as well give them to him now.

"No," she says, gently. "We broke up because I wanted to be with Chuck back then. Not the best decision in retrospect, but it's the one I made."

She'd loved Dan but back then she didn't know how to live in it. And sure, maybe other people's expectations had something to do with that. 

"So what does that mean for now?" he asks.

Blair bites her lip. "Is this really what all these lunches are about?"

Dan's gaze is so calm and focused. He looks the same to her even though he's older. It's stupid how much this feels the same, too, even though they have lived entirely separate lives since the last time they admitted they didn't quite hate one another. 

He was always better at owning up to things. "Yeah. You know it is, Blair."

"Serena –" she starts.

"I know," he says.

There's a little tremor in Blair's hand as she picks up her coffee cup and takes a sip to stall. She's been through so much, but she's still so afraid of him. How honest he is.

"She's going to think it was going on the entire time," Blair says finally. "That both of us were just longing for each other, too stupid to figure it out."

"Well," Dan says, and his lips quirk like he's kidding though his gaze is still so plain. "Maybe we were."

And despite everything, there is a part of Blair that likes that. She always was terribly romantic. 

 

 

 

It's not even about the sex. Which, Blair is pleased to discover, is just as good as she remembered and maybe even better; there's a hunger to it now that they didn't have before. It's like the first bite of food when you're starving. 

They have a trashy and wonderful little affair, rolled up in Dan's bed during lunch hours, Blair beginning to unbutton on the way to his door. Fastening her stockings in the cab back to work, her hair a mess. Her assistant keeps telling her she looks flushed, is it cold outside or something? 

The sex is good, but it's secondary. Maybe when Blair was younger she thought that was the problem; she was supposed to like that part more than all the other parts, wasn't she? Wasn't that how you knew? That's how women knew in movies and books, they could identify their true love by the way he electrified their bodies. But what about how you felt after?

More than anything else, Blair likes being with Dan – just being _with_ him. Talking to him. Sitting with him. Being close to him. Being in his proximity. Knowing that when she's with him, she's safe in all the important ways. Knowing that she will not be hurt by Dan. Blair hadn't even known how deeply she missed that until she had it again. With Chuck she always had to be alert. With Dan she doesn't have to be anything.

Blair has always liked to be taken care of in the way of spoiled girls who don't know how to take care of themselves. She always liked to make people do things for her, to exercise her control over them. Even now she loves to snip and snipe at her staff, watching them scurry. She grew up but she never grew out of it. But she also liked to fight against it, idolizing Serena's independence and feeling her lack of it so acutely, so meanly, so much of her at fault. Dan is good at both. He's good at doing what she tells him to do but also good at doing things she would never expect and listening when she tells him to back off. It's so easy for her to please him. Even Blair at her meanest delights him.

She remembers she used to be jealous sometimes, when they were teenagers, of Dan's devotion to Serena. Boys were always devoted to Serena, even and especially boys who were supposed to be Blair's. Serena didn't even want that from them, she didn't want to be the marble girl on the pillar, but Blair did, that's all Blair wanted. The first time they were together, even when Dan said he loved her, Blair remained convinced he really loved Serena. Most people did. Only Chuck had only loved her even if his love was the kind that left empty indentations. 

They've been sleeping together for two months when Dan says he wants to tell Serena. They're in bed, her head on his chest. He seems surprised when Blair agrees, but she wouldn't have gotten involved with him again if it was going to be a fling or a secret, something silly like when they were younger. She wants to bring him home with her. She wants him all the time.

"I love you," Blair tells him. It's the first time she's ever said it to him, and maybe it's too soon – if fifteen years and two months can be too soon. She wants to say more, give him all the reasons and explanations and lists, tell him everything about himself that is exactly what she wants, but she finds she only has breath for that one tried and true sentiment. "I love you," Blair says, until she's saying it against his mouth, into a kiss. _I love you_ , until she's crying and Dan is smiling and shushing her and kissing her wet cheeks and getting a little dewy-eyed himself.

"Sap," she accuses, wiping at her cheeks, laughing now.

"There's my girl," Dan says, and kisses her again.

 

 

 

Everyone thinks Annabelle is Serena's Mini Me, blue-eyed and golden-haired, but her blue eyes are the same shape as Dan's, her golden hair has his curl, her nose is his too with its many dips, and her lips are shaped just like his – a curling bracket atop a parenthesis. She has always had an edginess that her mother lacked, as well, a sharp and observational nature that set her at odds with Serena almost as early as Annabelle had learned enough words to be able to disagree. 

Annabelle and Blair have always gotten along well, co-conspirators. Annabelle wrote Blair letters when she was little, childish scrawl stamped and mailed, all about whomever at school had wronged her. When she would visit she would perch at Blair's vanity with reverence and spritz her perfume, inexpertly swipe on her lipstick, hold Blair's earrings up against her own un-pierced ears. "Mom doesn't _get_ me," she would huff as she got older, sounding not unlike Serena complaining about Lily, seeking Blair's reassurance. Nic was strangely un-demanding for a child of Blair's, so she never knew quite what to do with Annabelle's unearned devotion. Blair's word was law to her and Blair did not want to abuse the privilege. 

Annabelle has always idolized her Aunt Blair, but in the wake of finding out that Blair is sleeping with her father, she turns totally. She snaps back tight to her mother's side with a loyalty Serena seems pleased by, but sheepish about too, like she recognizes the pettiness of wanting to win back her daughter's capricious teen affections in this way. 

And now Annabelle and Scott don't want to hang out with Nic anymore. 

"It's not _my_ fault," Nicolette says accusingly, little face screwed up with anger. Left unspoken: _it's yours_.

Blair endeavors to be honest with her daughter, but she does tell her that lie all parents tell their children, the one about time. 

And it is most definitely a lie. The kids will probably come to forgive her in some way, but Blair will always be the woman who broke up their parents' marriage even if she hadn't meant to. She will always be the other woman. She will always have stolen their father. Blair knows that firsthand. She loves Roman now, but that resentment festered for years, and he wasn't even someone she knew, someone she loved, someone she trusted. 

Dan lies to her too. "They'll adjust," he says. "I did. I mean, it won't happen overnight. But they're good kids and they love us, and sooner or later we'll all figure it out."

Blair can't help but feel that she betrayed Annabelle and Scott, these children she loves who belong to two of the most important people in her life. And in doing so she ruined things for Nicolette. Nic's happiness has always been of utmost importance to Blair, and not just out of a desire to out-mother Eleanor. Nicolette saved Blair; making Nic happy is the least Blair can do in return. Now Blair has put herself first, and it's as much of a disaster as it usually was.

 

 

 

Against all odds, Nicolette and Henry are very close. Chuck doesn't like it, Blair can tell, because he views Nicolette as an interloper's child, the reason his marriage dissolved. The fault still isn't his, of course. Henry remains skittish of Blair, for as much as he loves his baby sister. His first baby sister, anyway; Chuck has had a string of interchangeable blonde wives who had gotten progressively younger, and they provide him with a string of interchangeable children whom he dutifully pays for and trots out like trophies whenever he wants. 

Henry is what one might expect from an older brother; he is traditionally protective and teasing but also shockingly, surprisingly kind. Blair keeps waiting for some streak of meanness to present itself, but somehow she and Chuck have managed to produce two well-mannered children. (For all that she tried to cut him out, Blair can see Chuck in Nicolette too. Her eyes are a little narrower than Blair's, the line of her jaw slightly stronger.)

Blair only gets Henry one weekend a month, all the Jewish holidays, and two weeks at the end of summer. She's still not sure how she ended up with that deal, a combination of bad legal advice and her own late pregnancy exhaustion. When Henry is at her home, ghosting through her halls as though he'll never quite belong there, Blair remains as perplexed by him as she was when he was a child. She wants that ease she has with Nicolette but time and bad circumstances have built up a wall that feels insurmountable. 

It hasn't gotten any easier since Dan moved in. The dinner table turns into a scene from the kind of low-budget indie movies Blair turns her nose up at: Blair's brittle white wine drinking; Dan's aggressive attempts to engage the kids in conversation; Nicolette sulking about her parents ruining her life; finally Henry, lost and crawling out of his skin. 

It's a relief when he goes home if only because he's one less variable to worry about. It's a relief until the guilt sets in. 

 

 

 

The apartment has always had a library, but after Dan comes to live with them he sweeps through it like a tornado. Now it's half his office, in the sense that there is a desk in there that he sits at sometimes and he's put up his _A Farewell to Arms_ poster next to her _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ one. But it's also where Blair curls up in an armchair to read and where Nicolette does her homework. It's where the cats go to sleep every night in their soft little cat-cave (there are cats now, because Dan was not above trying to win Nic's affections back with two twin ragdoll kittens named Dior and Miu Miu; more obviously, he was not allowed to name them). It's where Dan and Blair sit in front of the fireplace for the dates she demands they have once a week. It's the place in their home that is the homiest, the warm heart of whole place.

And it's where Dan asks her to marry him, though he doesn't ask in so many words. It's early on Sunday morning and Nic is away at a sleepover that she won't return from until later. They're half-watching _The Apartment_ while Blair complains about someone at work and Dan gives her his usual inattentive _hmm_ 's. Her hand's in his and he keeps toying with her fingers, letting them tangle and untangle, and it's not until she happens to glance down that she sees he's slid a ring onto her finger.

She meets his eyes, feeling a little wild.

"What do you say?" Dan asks. 

Blair is too surprised to say anything. She hadn't planned on getting married again.

"It could just be a ring, if you want," he says. 

It's that more than anything that makes up her mind. When she says yes, he asks her to say it again; against his mouth, Blair says it as many times as he wants to hear.

 

 

 

There are certain details from each of her weddings that Blair will never forget. Her stomach clenching in waves of nausea before she walked down the aisle to Louis. Chuck's hands being pulled out of hers by the police. So much of it faded over time, replaced with a vague sense of nervous excitement and terror, but there were certain stark things that could not be lost.

Blair is not anxious before she marries Dan. She feels detached from the process somehow, unconcerned with china and menus and flowers and locations, thinking only of the ring on her finger and what it already means to her. Dan had it inscribed, and she likes to think she can feel the words like a promise pressed into her skin. 

She wears a lace dress in a cool mauve-y silver and carries a bouquet of lilacs, is enveloped by the sweetness of their scent. She doesn't remember anything afterwards except Dan's face. Dan watching her walk towards him, his expression soft and happy.

Blair just doesn't care about anything else.

Serena doesn't attend but she calls Blair the morning of to make quiet chitchat, as if it's any day of the week and not the day Blair is marrying her ex-husband. All she offers is a faint but not disingenuous _good luck_ before she says goodbye. Annabelle and Scott are in the wedding party but neither are particularly happy about it. Scott, at least, appears to have forgiven Nic enough that they slink around the reception like partners in crime again, hiding under tables to escape all the adults. Henry attends as well, but he'd declined being a groomsman and he leaves early.

At sixteen Annabelle is as surly and caustic as Dan ever was, with Serena's rebellious streak to match, so Blair is wary of what to expect from her niece-turned-stepdaughter. Annabelle is distant until the night is winding down, when she settles into her father's empty chair beside Blair. Dan is off trying to coax the little ones out from under a buffet table.

"Dad looks really happy," Annabelle says reluctantly. 

"I'd hope so," Blair replies.

Annabelle snorts. Something about it – the look on her face, the way she tosses her hair over her shoulder – makes Blair feel sixteen herself again, sitting beside her best friend at one of Lily's many weddings. "Mom wouldn't want me to… I don't know. Don't think this _means_ anything, but… Neither of them seemed happy for a really long time, so." She shrugs. "I guess there's that."

"What a ringing endorsement," Blair says, amused. "We ought to have put that on the invitations." 

Annabelle looks at Blair and sort of smiles, but then rolls her eyes and gets up. "Whatever."

It's probably the best one could hope for.

 

 

 

It starts as a joke. When Nicolette becomes old enough to truly metabolize her pre-teen angst into sarcasm, she transitions _Uncle Dan_ into _Uncle Dad_ , for use whenever she wants to be the brattiest of brats. But somewhere along the line it gets chopped down to a casual Dad. The first time she does it, calls Dan dad, Blair sees him freeze but then move past it, accepting it without drawing attention to it. Maybe it was one of those things they should've talked about, but they never did. They just let it happen.

Nicolette only ever calls him that at home, never in front of Scott or Annabelle or Serena. But on her fourteenth birthday party, surrounded by family and friends and preparing to blow out her candles, she slips. "Dad," she calls, laughing, "Make sure you get a picture!"

She doesn't realize what she's said until after she's said it.

The moment passes, but the blowup comes later. Scott, stung, says more than a few nasty things. Serena makes a hissed comment about appropriateness. The innocuously bitchy comments of Nic's other friends stand out in particular. "Mr. Humphrey's not really your dad, though?" one of them says, and another adds, "I thought you didn't know who your dad even _was_."

It results in a birthday party meltdown, which Blair is sympathetic to, to a point. She'd had plenty of those, after all. But it breaks her heart, standing alone in the kitchen after everyone has left and looking at her daughter's furious face. Nicolette has a little tiara on, her hair slipping free from its updo. It lost its curl as she got older. She put on mascara today and it's smudging. In her little pink dress, it's all very _it's my party and I'll cry if I want to_ , but Nicolette does not cry. She wants to but she won't, and Blair can tell because sometimes looking at Nic is like looking at herself looking at her own mother.

"Who's my dad?" Nicolette demands. Then, voice wavering, "Is Uncle Dan my dad? Is Uncle Nate?"

It's the first time she's ever asked, but it's clear it's not the first time the thought crossed her mind. 

For her daughter's entire life, Blair thought she was protecting her. She thought she had succeeded in saving at least one of them from Chuck, that she had done the right thing, that she had given Nic everything she could ever need. Blair hadn't planned, somehow, for this deep thirst in her daughter to know where she came from. She came from Blair.

"You and your brother have the same father," Blair says finally. She still doesn’t like to say Chuck’s name, sometimes. "He was abusive and controlling, so when we divorced, I didn't want him involved in your life."

Nic is confused, maybe more so by the fact that Blair gave up the information so readily. "That wasn't your decision."

“Yes, it was,” Blair says, eyebrow arching. "You were an infant. Of course it was my decision."

Nic presses her lips together, frustrated. "Does Henry know?"

"Of course not," Blair says. 

"Does my – does _Mr. Bass_ know?"

Blair's lips thin. "No," she says, and it's icier. "And he is not to know, Nicolette. Not ever."

"Why? Because you said so? You think you can control everything, all the time. My entire life, you've treated me like this little doll. But I have the right to know. It's _my_ life."

Blair blinks, taken aback. In her head she hears, _Blair was my first dress form_. Her mother still likes to use that anecdote sometimes.

It's that echoing in her ears that makes Blair swallow her defensiveness. "I'm sorry," she says. "I am sorry that you felt I kept things from you. I was not doing it to try and control you." She looks into brown eyes just like hers, only a little narrower. "There were times in my marriage to Chuck that I genuinely thought I was going to die. I never wanted you to feel that way. I wanted you to be safe from him. That's all."

Nicolette's expression is a complicated mix, but Blair can tell sympathy is already softening her. She's a good person. She is not Blair. She is not Chuck. "But you left Henry."

Blair swallows but her measured tone remains the same. "I didn't have a choice."

Henry turned twenty last month. Blair had not lived in the same house as him for longer than two weeks since he was five years old.

"You do now," Nicolette says.

 

 

 

"So, uh…" Henry doesn't make eye contact, his gaze traveling around the quiet dining room of the restaurant they're having lunch in. "How's Dan and everything?"

"Nice of you to ask," Blair says. "He's fine. He has a new book coming out next year, so he's working on that. Your sister's fine as well."

"I know," Henry says offhandedly. He drums his fingers on the tabletop. "We talk."

"Of course," Blair murmurs. "I – how's school?"

Henry's eyes finally find hers, discomfort evident in his face. Insane to think that Blair's small talk with her own child is more stilted than the bullshit she spews at charity galas and work events. "Why did you want to meet?"

He never calls her Mom. He never calls her anything.

"What do you mean?" she says. "You're my son. Mothers have lunches with their sons."

Derision colors his expression. "Sure," he said.

"What?"

He shrugs jerkily. "Mothers have lunches with their sons, sure. _You_ and _I_ don't."

That stings.

"Is it too late to start?" she wonders stiffly. Wonders genuinely.

"Gee, it's never too late, _Mom_ ," he says, sarcastic. 

She takes a breath. "Henry. I'm sorry for –" 

"Sorry for what?" he interrupts. "Sorry for cheating on Dad? Sorry for leaving?"

How could Blair think of Henry as a son when Chuck only ever used him as a pawn, a way of exercising control to keep her in line? How to explain that looking at Henry only made her think of the most miserable days of her life? It wasn't his fault. He was a child.

"No," Blair says finally. "I'm not sorry for that. I do wish things had been different, but I can't change them."

He studies her, asks baldly, "Why didn't you want me?"

She should say that she did; that it was only circumstance that kept her from him. But that wouldn't be the truth. "I didn't know what to do with a boy," Blair says after a moment, a stupid thing to say. She shakes her head. "Your father wanted you more. There wasn't room for me."

She expects him to scoff but instead gets a kind of resignation in response. "Yeah," Henry says, looking away. "He's like that."

Blair hesitates but then puts her hand on top of his. "You're welcome any time, you know," she says firmly. "Any time. When you have a break from school, you can come home. To my home. And maybe I could – we could get to know one another."

Henry hedges. "I don't know."

In that moment, Blair thinks of Dan: his unwavering affection that never infringed on her but was simply there until the day she was ready to have it.

"That's okay," Blair says, and she means it. "Whenever you're ready."

And she thinks she sees something almost like relief in Henry.

 

 

 

Blair and Dan are settled in the study, working on separate projects but harmonious in their quiet shuffling and typing. After a moment she asks nonchalantly, "Do you ever feel bad that we didn't have a child?"

Dan looks at her like she's crazy even though she knows he knows what she means. "We've got four."

She loves him a little bit more right then, if it's even possible to, for so easily folding them all in, even the son of hers who won't speak to him and the daughter of his who won't speak to her. They've got four.

"Why?" he asks. "Do you?"

"No." Blair slides off the couch to sit beside him on the floor. "We've got four." 

Dan smiles a little and turns to press a kiss to her mouth. "Do you want to know a secret?"

"Always."

He brings his hand up to touch her face, his thumb on her cheekbone. "I don't care if it makes me an asshole. I don't care if it makes me an insensitive, dysfunctional jerk. I wanted you the whole time. The first night we kissed to now. I never stopped, not for a minute."

Blair stopped and started and stopped again, stalled out like a vintage car on a winding road. But she thinks she was on the right road. It just took her longer. "I know," she says. "I always knew."

She knew even when she pretended not to. 

"There's no one else I…" This part is always harder for Blair, even now that they've exchanged vows and rings and she wakes up curled around Dan every morning. A small part of her will always be terrified that this is too fragile to survive. "You're it for me, Dan. You're – you're _it_."

Like the silly stories she always loved that revolved around two people fitting together like puzzle pieces against all odds, always finding each other before the credits rolled. She'd wanted to wash her hands of it, but it had never quite washed its hands of her. She could not imagine her life with anyone else but Dan, and she wouldn't want to. He was it. He was hers.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [firstaudrina](http://firstaudrina.tumblr.com/). :)


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